


May Fever

by Notfye



Category: Alice by Heart - Sheik/Sater/Sater & Nelson
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, I know nothing of England please don't come for me, Spring, gratuitous literary references, not really underage but teenagers do make out in this, this is soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:26:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24368059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notfye/pseuds/Notfye
Summary: Halfway through May the days start coming as they should: deep, electric things, humid and heavy with the dew of grass and the promise of summer.
Relationships: Alice Spencer/Alfred Hallam
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20





	May Fever

**Author's Note:**

> Where I live we literally got halfway through May this year before the leaves started coming out, it was terrible, but the first day it hit 75 degrees I went mad with the sheer energy of it, so I wrote a fic. Enjoy!

Halfway through May the days start coming as they should: deep, electric things, humid and heavy with the dew of grass and the promise of summer. The wind rustles through the new leaves, lurid and bright yellow-green against the blue blue sky. The wind blows and even from the morning there is a hint of thunder on it; the knowledge that, come the afternoon, all of this built-up heat will come tumbling down. 

It is the sort of day that not only encourages reckless behavior, but practically condones it.

Alice gets out of bed and pulls on her uniform, all cotton and wool. She hates her school, hates preemptively that when she rolls down her socks later Mrs. Cross will yell at her. It feels wrong to be going to school today. Days like these ought to be spent outside in the sun, climbing trees or having picnics and reading books. Not sitting in hot classrooms where her teachers have to turn off the lights in order to bring down the heat. 

She starts her walk to school miffed and waits outside Alfred’s house for him in the shade of a maple. He comes out, cheeks already ruddy—She knows the heat gets to him. 

“Good morning,” he says, and grins tiredly. He eyes the clouds at the horizon. “Is it supposed to storm?”

“I hope so,” she says, and frowns, “It’s too hot.”

“I thought you liked springtime,” he says as they start down the street. 

“I do, it’s just,” she gestures helplessly, “It’s a crime to be inside today.” 

“Well, we’ll go someplace after school, then. The sunset is late these days.” He rubs her shoulder. Then, he sighs and looks up at the trees overhead. “I miss autumn,” he says. “The spring makes me too excited. It tires me out just to exist.”

Alice looks over at him. “You’re an old man, Alfred.”

“Yeah, I know.”

*

Their first class of the day is Biology, and there’s something about the heat that gives it an unreal feeling. It’s too vivid. It feels like it’s a particularly sharp dream. 

Alice looks across the lab table, sticky with condensation and humidity. There’s Alfred, lovely Alfred, hair mussed and sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Something about it makes her giddy, makes her stomach do quick little flips without a true cause. 

He looks up and smiles at her, the one that asks  _ What trouble are you about to cause, now? _

She simply grins back, and tries to look down at her paper before he notices the blush creeping over her neck. Then she wonders why, exactly, there’s a blush creeping over her neck.

This day is strange, she decides, and so it doesn’t count. This just  _ happens _ sometimes: she watches Alfred a little more closely, feels their many years of friendship a little more intimately, and acts on nothing. Whatever this is,—this feverish, heady thing—it always passes when the day is over, and Alice doesn’t think about it. 

She watches his fingers on his pencil and the page he’s taking notes on, her own forgotten. They’re normal, but pale, save for the last knuckles which are rosy as though the blood is pooling there. What pretty, nimble little things. 

Mr. Butridge starts circling the classroom and Alice hurriedly writes out Punnett squares, as if she was never doing anything else. 

*

In English class they work through  _ Romeo and Juliet _ . Their teacher assigns them parts at the beginning that they carry for the rest; Alice gets Mercutio and spends class doing nothing. She sits next to Tabatha, who got Benvolio, and listens to her mock the whole thing under her breath. 

They’re reading the balcony scene today, the burden of which has fallen to Clarissa and Dodgy. They seem to be enjoying it, at any rate: both wildly dramatic and playing off each other. 

“O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?” Dodgy implores, kneeling below the chair that Clarissa’s standing on. Alfred’s standing across the room from Alice, poised to come on as the nurse.

“What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?” Clarissa returns, scoffingly, like a Golden Age actress, and Alfred catches Alice’s eye. 

“Th' exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine.” She holds his gaze, wondering what he’s trying to do. She swallows. Quickly, so quickly, he looks back to the scene in front of him, watches it just like everyone else. When he comes on a moment later, he sounds slightly strangled. 

Or, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe the heat is just getting to her and she’s making things up, and she has no idea about what’s going on at all. 

*

At lunch, the two of them go to the hill at the side of the school. Alice sits with her copy of _Jane Eyre_ while Alfred lies in the grass beside her, arm thrown over his eyes, listening to her read. They’re not too far in: Jane is still young and at her boarding school and Helen is dying. 

Alice pauses in her reading and takes a bite of her sandwich, considering. Then she says, “If you were dying of tuberculosis, I’d crawl into bed with you, too.”

Alfred moves his arm away to look at her. “I hope you wouldn’t. I’d get you sick.” 

“So?”

“I’d kill you.”

“So?” she says again, more incredulous, and Alfred laughs. 

He sits up and reaches for the book. “Let me see. It’s my turn.” Alice passes it to him and he puts on his poshest narrator voice and reads for the rest of their lunch period. It’s peaceful: the murmur of his character voices and the smell of lilac from the garden beds near the building. 

At the end of the period they go back inside for their afternoon classes, and Alfred hands the book back to her. 

He shoulders his backpack and starts heading towards math. “For the record,” he says, “You’re the only person I’d want to lie with me while I died. But I still would rather you be safe.”

*

By the time the school day ends the haze that’s swaddled the day has settled into proper storm clouds. Alfred gets an alert on his phone for a thunderstorm warning. 

“So much for going to do something,” Alice says. 

“Nonsense,” he says, “We just have to stay inside.”

They start to walk back to Alice’s house, but end up running at the end when a low roll of thunder echoes from somewhere beyond their neighborhood. By the time they make it inside, they’re both red-faced and sweaty, and the first raindrops are hitting against the window panes. Alice looks at Alfred, his hair sticking up all over, and giggles.

“What?” he asks and then says, “Your hair doesn’t look that great, either.” 

“No?” She reaches up and makes his hair worse. It feels dirty and slick with sweat. “It looks better than  _ that _ .”

“Cheater,” he accuses, and grins. 

She pushes his hair back into some semblance of what it’s supposed to look like. Her fingers flutter when she pulls her hand away, like she almost wants them to land on his shoulder, like she almost wants to cradle his cheek. 

They kick off their shoes and go further into the house. The place is dark and shadowy now that the afternoon light has been overruled by purple clouds. They go to her bedroom, and perhaps it’d be weird if they hadn’t been friends since they were six, but as the case stands it is how things are, even if her mother disapproves. 

Thunder cracks again, closer this time, and her arms goosebump. Strange, to have felt so hot only a moment ago and now be chilled. She practically wants to wrap herself in her blankets. 

Alfred wanders over to her desk and retrieves a bag of lemon drops. He takes one and passes the bag to her. She takes nothing from it and puts it on her bed instead, then sits on the floor. 

“I hate that we have to go to school,” she starts, “They’re taking our childhoods from us.”

“You’d miss it if it were gone,” Alfred says as he sits down, with the tone of someone who has heard this same exasperation several times. 

Alice concedes somewhat: “I’d only miss it if I were without you.” Then, as an afterthought, “And everyone else we’re friends with. But I’d like to do whatever I want,  _ with _ those people. Not have to attend classes with them” 

He thinks for a moment. “Don’t wish anything away.”

Alice looks at him, petulance replaced with curiosity. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” he says, sighing, “Time is the most valuable thing we have, you know? That’s all.” 

“But we’re not  _ doing _ anything with it.”

She can see him thinking. She knows she’s right and smiles with self-satisfaction. 

“I guess not,” he says eventually. They settle into silence. 

She doesn’t know how long it lasts but eventually, he says, “Alice.” His voice sounds weird. It’s soft but there’s a fracture in it.

“Yeah?” she asks. She shifts to look at him more fully: he looks at her and she looks back. It’s like English class again, that same indecipherable message. 

Then his eyes drop to her lips for half a second. 

Oh. 

_ Oh.  _

She almost wants to ask if that’s all. Instead, she says, “Oh.”

A moment passes. Alfred looks acutely panicked, like she, somehow, wasn’t supposed to notice. Alice resolutely does not think through her next move.

She surges forward and kisses him. 

He stills for a moment, and then she pulls away. 

“I’m right, aren’t I?” She asks, suddenly very worried about what his next answer will be. 

“Yes,” he says in the same half-whisper as her. “I didn’t want to do something about it and hurt you.”

As if he ever could, she thinks. She doesn’t voice it, just leans in close again. He brings a hand up to cradle the back of her head and brings her across the few inches that still separate them. It feels like the sort of gentleness reserved only for particularly old glass. He kisses her softly and it’s like something out of an old movie, full of crooners and dance halls and all washed in black and white. 

She lets one of her hands go into his hair and the kiss becomes a little greedier. They have, apparently, been waiting. 

She lets his hand fall away and crawls over his lap; she takes his face in her hands and bends her own head down so she can kiss him. It feels feverish: Alfred’s hands come up and dig into her shoulders, into her too-small polo. He tastes like manufactured lemon and salt. Something swells in her chest, a fiery feeling ready to burst from beneath her ribs. 

The rain outside starts to pick up strength; there’s a steady hum of sound, like pebbles being rolled together. The trees toss their fresh leaves back and forth violently; the sky flashes purplish white. 

Alice looks down at Alfred and he looks up at her, warm and soft, lips a bit red and puffy. 

“How’s the rain?” he asks.

“Less ruinous than before.” 

“Really?”

She kisses him again, soundly.

*

“You should stay the night,” she says impulsively. They used to sleepover at each other’s houses when they were children, but it’s something that’s fallen to the wayside in recent years. They’re too old and their parents worry.

“Your mother will have a fit,” he says. 

She grins. “So?”

**Author's Note:**

> If you want, come talk to me on tumblr about Alice by Heart, at Notfye. I'm always completely in shambles about it and would really love to cry with someone.


End file.
